300 Royal Astronomical Society. 
that it will act as a stimulus to those who survive, to repair the 
loss which has been thus occasioned, and lead to new efforts for 
the promotion of the objects which it has in view. 
The Earl of Macclesfield was one of the early members of this 
Society, and continued his connexion with us till the time of his 
death. He was the great-grandson of the first Earl of Maccles- 
field, who was President of the Royal Society in 1752; and who 
had established an astronomical observatory, fitted up with excel- 
lent instruments, at Shirburn Castle, near Oxford, which Bradley 
frequently visited. The observations made at Shirburn are now in 
the Savilian Library at Oxford; and Bradley acknowledged his 
obligations to them in enabling him to complete his researches on 
nutation and refraction. The observatory does not now exist; but 
in the library, which is still in great preservation, and contains 
many valuable printed works, there is a large collection of original 
letters, from men of science, in the last century ; amongst which 
the names of Oughtred, Flamsteed, the Gregorys, Barrow, Wallis, 
and Newton, frequently occcur. The late Earl of Macclesfield, 
whose decease we are now recording, permitted the late Professor 
Rigaud to make a selection of such letters as he thought might be 
most interesting to the public, which have since been printed at the 
University press of Oxford, and at the expense of the delegates, in 
two volumes. Amongst these documents is the first letter which 
Flamsteed wrote to the President of the Royal Society, on Nov. 
24, 1669, and which was not known to be still in existence prior 
to this discovery. Only a portion of it was printed in the Philo- 
sophical Transactions; and in the present publication there are 
yet certain portions omitted, which are not now considered to be 
interesting. 
Mr. Smeaton was a civil engineer, and was descended from a 
brother of his celebrated namesake: he had been but a short time 
a fellow of the Society when he was removed by death. 
Mr. Thomas Tulley was the second son of Charles Tulley, the 
optician, in whose workshop he was brought up, and to whose 
business he succeeded, first in partnership with an elder brother, 
and afterwards alone, on the death of the latter. 
Rear-admiral d’Urban has been dead some years, but the Coun- 
cil did not receive any news of his decease till very recently. 
The Rev. Michael Ward had been a fellow of the Society for a 
long period. He was fond of astronomy, and possessed a small 
observatory. 
Major-General Shrapnell was well known to military men as the 
inventor of the destructive shell which bears his name. He was for 
many years a fellow of the Society, though his period of active exer- 
tion was almost passed before the Society was established. 
Mr. James Moore French, chronometer-maker, at the Royal 
Exchange, was a zealous and successful artist, and on several 
occasions gained the prize given to the best of the chronometers 
which were tried at Greenwich. 
